In June 2019, Tom Dugdale, Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre, traveled to Cluj, the second largest city in Romania, to conduct a three day workshop with Reactor, an independent theatre with a growing presence in the Romanian cultural scene.
Reactor is a progressive organization committed to experimental, collaborative theater-making. Whereas state-funded theaters in Cluj (and throughout Romania) often demonstrate a bias for producing classical plays, Reactor distinguishes itself with its commitment to creating new work.
Pr. Dugdale was inspired by Reactor’s interest in working against the grain, in no small part because he had been working decidedly with the grain in six previous productions he had directed in Romania—all of them at state theaters, and all of them productions of classic plays by writers like Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Henrik Ibsen.
3 major goals for the workshop
First and foremost, for the nine actors and three playwrights who participated: provide an engaging, enriching encounter with some approaches to devising original theatrical material. (In theatre, we use the word “devising” to describe a rehearsal process not built upon previously scripted text.)
Next, explore the relationship between family and home—might be a viable scaffold upon which to build a full production.
Finally, get a picture of each actor’s range and talents, to choose a cast if the project continued forward.
9 prompts to help launch our first day of work:
Introductions -
Your name, where you're from,
what you could see out the bedroom window of your childhood house.
Describe a really weird object in your childhood house.
Standing in our empty studio,
visualize a room from your childhood house.
Describe it to us in great detail.
Experiment with being inside and outside the visualization.
How did you look when you:
danced when you were 5?
danced at 15?
are dancing now?
Draw your family around the dinner table in your childhood house.
Take a few minutes to consider the presence (or not) of the following in your childhood house:
Joy
Pain
Love
Using others, stage a tableaux of the presence (or not) of one of the above in your house. Stand outside the tableaux like a Master of Ceremonies, describing each frozen person and detail.
Describe to a partner the strongest personality in your family. Ask your partner to faithfully embody this strong personality. Coach them on their embodiment til it satisfies you.
Respond to the following in writing:
The most ridiculous thing that ever happened
in our house was ___________.If you asked my mother or my father what they thought
about art, they would say ___________.
Sing a short song about a secret of your house.
